Since I update my tumblr a lot more than my blogspot blog, I'm working on merging them. This is a test post. I hope you're enjoying it.

A long interview between myself and Sean T. Collins has been posted at the Comics Journal website this week. In it we discuss risk, dissociative episodes, and the role discomfort plays in my creative process. We also touch on the Song of Ice and Fire series, Eminem, Big Daddy Kane, George Macdonald, Dune, Dylan Williams, and Andreas Serrano. Believe me, I love to do these really serious interviews where we talk about how dark I am for days.

Too Dark to See was named one of the best comics of 2011 by Sean on the Robot 6 blog, where he said,

It was a dark year for comics, at least for the comics that moved me the most. And no one harnessed that darkness to relatable, emotional effect better than Julia Gfrörer. Her very contemporary take on the legend of the succubus was frank and explicit in its treatment of sexuality, rigorously well-observed in its cataloguing of the spirit-sapping modern-day indignities that can feed depression and destroy relationships, and delicately, almost tenderly drawn. It’s like she held her finger to the air, sensed all the things that can make life rotten, and cast them onto the pages. She made something quite beautiful out of all that ugly.

and by J.T. Dockery at the Atomics Book Blog, who said,

I became a big fan of Gfrorer's previous book, Flesh and Bone from Sparkplug Comics, after a few readings, and her new self-published mini is growing on me, or in me like some demonic presence, over the past few months. She makes seemingly simple, almost minimalist (but wonderfully rendered--she's a hell of an artist) comics, which are deceptively packed with lots of symbolic information. Rewarding work.

And finally, some friends of mine started up a publishing collective called Press Gang. If you read this interview with them all the way to the bottom you will find a preview page from my contribution to the upcoming Elfworld #3.

Tonight David Lasky and I are doing a comics reading to celebrate the release of Best American Comics 2011 at Gainsbourg in Seattle. Here's a link to the Slog post.

I'll be reading from both Flesh and Bone and Too Dark to See. I edited all the images for my presentation on the train, listening to Sade. There will also be absinthe cocktails and French music. Yes, this is completely real, we live inside a dream.

Rest? What is rest? Sorrow has returned.
Alas for the Danes! Aeschere is dead.
He was Yrmenlaf's elder brother
and a soul-mate to me, a true mentor,
my right-hand man when the ranks clashed
and our boar-crests had to take a battering
in the line of action. Aeschere was everything
the world admires in a wise man and a friend.

Dylan Williams, the mastermind behind Sparkplug Comic Books (which published my book Flesh and Bone) is seriously ill and facing some gruesome medical bills. If you were thinking of ordering some haunting and artsy indie comics, now is a good time to support Sparkplug.

Here I am grimly tabling at Stumptown last month, as photographed by Glenn Peters.

A tragic thing happened to my computer (I spilled some hot tea on it while reading Twilight fanfic, alright) resulting in some unfortunate silence in my corners of the internet over the course of a very exciting fortnight. I will now catch you up with an extraordinarily excitement-dense blog entry.

The first ten pages of Flesh and Bone are going to appear in Best American Comics 2011, guest edited by Alison Bechdel and to be released on October 4 (Saint Francis's feast day, which I like to spend watching Brother Sun, Sister Moon and opening bibles at random for advice) of this year. What! Excitement.

Wallid H. Felding of Underground Brilliance posted a nice little review of Ariadne auf Naxos. He even explained how to pronounce my name.

J. Caleb Mozzocco reviewed Too Dark to See for the Newsarama blog, and Justin Giampaoli reviewed it on 13 Minutes. Both of these reviews are beautiful and thrilling and you should check them out.

I was also interviewed by J. T. Dockery for the Victorian Squares blog. We talked about some of the cultural touchstones that influenced Flesh and Bone, and I cleared up some stuff about the story that was confusing him.

Finally, Too Dark to See has been distributed to my distributors, and you can buy it from them as well as from me. Visit Global Hobo, Miss Valerie Park, and Sparkplug Comic Books for online retail comix thrills.